Distant Early Warning : The University of Chicago Press : 9780226753454 : 022675345X : 09 Jul 2021 : "In Distant Early Warning, Alex Kitnick reveals the story of Marshall McLuhan's entanglement with the art and artists of the twentieth-century avant-garde. It is a story packed with big names: Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Nam June Paik, Tom Wolfe, Harold Rosenberg, Max Kozloff, and more. Kitnick, though, is not focused on celebrity, instead he carefully forges connections between McLuhan, his theories, and the artists of his time with thorough research and superb useof McLuhan's own words. McLuhan's writings on media spread quickly and his provocations about what art should be and what artists should be responsible for fueled then current debates. McLuhan observed that artists are first to act in response to change,and he believed they should be the ones to which we entrust new media and technologies. Thus Rauschenberg's desire to connect with cultu